Page 14 of The Alien's Major Dilemma

“Wait, wait, wait,” Marissa said. “You guys are bred in a lab? You didn’t know your parents at all? How did I trigger your extra special adult puberty if it’s supposed to be done by some guy in a lab?”

“I don’t know how you did it,” Cooper admitted. “I know, in general, that it’s possible for it to happen naturally. If a Chelion hasn’t ever left the planet or missed the blockers during their first maturation cycle, they can be triggered by another Chelion in the same situation. It’s how we find whole clutches of Chelion raised outside of the cities. It’s incredibly rare, though, and most of those nymphs end up with such terrible deformities that they die during their first maturation. And even if they don’t, they haven’t been guided in such a way that they’re able to take their place in society.”

Everything about his explanation felt wrong but Marissa couldn’t put her finger on why. If it worked for them, why did she want to rampage through the entire system and kick it over. It was on another planet and didn’t involve her at all.

“And you think I’m your mate because I triggered this second maturation for you,” she said slowly.

“Yes,” he said.

“What does that mean, exactly?”

“For me, it means that I’m physically able to release my seed to fertilize your eggs. For you, it means that you can release eggs that can be fertilized by my seed.”

Marissa struggled with her next question but it just came out as a shaky “How?”

“Well, I’m still working out how certain parts of the human female anatomy works but I understand your species does release eggs.”

“Technically yes,” she said. “So, what, that means that we’re theoretically physically compatible? Genetically?”

“Oh, more than theoretically,” he said. “Once you triggered my second maturation, my body started doing everything it could to make sure we could produce offspring. It will be easier once I’ve incorporated some of your genetic material into my own and-”

Marissa jumped to her feet and backed away from him. “What the fuck? What do you mean incorporate my genetic material? How the fuck does that work?”

He looked confused at her panic. “The same way it works for humans, I think. What else is the purpose of kissing?”

“Kissing?”

“Yes, kissing. I understand there is a great deal of meaning and ritual around the process but it seems to trigger the same exchange of genetic information that my people use to introduce an appropriate donor to an Egg-layer.”

“Yeah, that’s not exactly helping,” she told him.

Cooper started pacing again. “I’m explaining it badly,” he said. “Your reactions tell me this is outside of your experience and I understand that but it’s not weird and should not be off-putting.”

“Dude, your people don’t mate for life, they are introduced in a lab by exchanging specimens. And you need so much caregrowing up that you’re raised by scientists and doctors instead of parents. Nothing about that sounds appealing or like a good reason to kidnap me.”

“No, that’s just it, the scientists and doctors are there to make sure we don’t mate for life. When a second maturation is triggered spontaneously, unless there is immediate intervention, Chelions will bond with the person who triggered their maturation and no one else. Ideally, that would guarantee happy pair bondings the way your people have romanticized, but it ended up with predatory harems. Males who would seek unprotected females to force into their second maturation and force them to carry clutch after clutch. Females who would create armies who were slavishly devoted to her for the chance to have their own nymphs hatch.”

“So, who triggered the Chelions at the center of these harems?” Marissa asked. "And how did they do it?"

“What?” Cooper stopped pacing and stared at her.

“If they only bond to the person who triggered their second maturation, it would stand to reason that they couldn’t bond to anyone else, right? So they had someone who triggered their second maturation but didn’t bond them which let them trigger a bunch of others who ended up bonded to them but who they didn't bond to exclusively.”

It was a thought he’d never had before. She could see it in his face, feel it in his reaction to her, and it started others. The cascade of emotions that poured through his expression told her he needed more than a few moments to process her questions.

“I don’t know,” he finally answered. “But they were horrible for everybody involved and the Dragor figured out how to stop them. Doing it this way has been better for all the Chelions.”

“And the Dragor have free reign to develop their ideal soldiers, and workers, and servants all the while being hailed as heroesfor doing so. Winning all around, sounds like,” Marissa said. “But what does that have to do with me?”

“Ah,” Cooper let out a shaky breath. “That’s where it becomes a little complicated. See, part of the Chelion pair bond is psychokinetic, which means that I feel what you feel and vice versa. The closer we are, the more we feel it. So when you hit me, you felt it the way I did. I can block it a bit but the longer we’re together, the stronger the bond will get.”

“So even without an exchange of genetic material, we’re already bonding,” Marissa said. “Obviously, the Dragor have figured out how to avoid this when they're introducing a couple. Is there any way to stop it once it's been triggered?”

“Not with the supplies I have with me. Maybe if we could get back to my planet in time someone could break it but it would be unpleasant and there’s a chance one of us wouldn’t survive the process. Probably me, actually. I didn’t know humans could create this kind of bond and I doubt anybody else did, either.”

“Well, that’s kinda fucked up,” Marissa said. And meant it. Everything he’d told her about how his people manage procreation gave her the creeps. And she didn’t exactly want to meet any of the Dragor at this point, either. If they lived as long as Cooper implied they did, it couldn’t mean good things for the people they experimented on.

“You take the good with the bad, really,” Cooper said with a shrug.

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